This client had fallen in love with Japanese gardens from a visit their, and challenged me to create a little bit of that Japanese magic in Tynemouth.  Glad they did as this project was an absolute joy turning a piece of lawn into a crafted Japanese haven.

This was an unusual garden as was separate from the house, half tarmac as a parking space, and open to the public so privacy for an important driver to enable the client to relax.  The garden was a modest 80m2

We embraced the classic Japanese essential elements of water with zip-zag timber bridge, mountains (raised beds and bounders), gravel garden, a symbolic stream and crafted trees.  The central star of the show was a cloud pruned Pinus Mugo tree, placed within an island bed of moss.  We had an elevated deck laid diagonally to make the most of the longer view of an elegant Lily bowl water feature and cloud pruned Pine.

The symbolic stream meandered through the garden with a carpet pf Lithodora diffusa ‘Heavenly blue’, as well as some blue glass beads to make ‘the stream’ shimmer.

To create immediate privacy we planted an ‘instant’ mature Portuguese Laurel hedge, supplemented with some pleached trees and some beautiful mature specimen Acer palmatum.  We also used some mature pieces of bamboo to make a sense of boundary on one side, using a traditional Japanese knot to connect them.